Specimens of Antient Sculpture: Imperialism and the decline of art

Specimens of Antient Sculpture: Imperialism andthe decline of art

Andrew Ballantyne

In 1809 the Society of Dilettanti published a volume of very fine engraved printsillustrating examples of antique sculptures, with a commentary by RichardPayne Knight. It was always intended that there would be a second volume, butin the event that did not appear until 1835, well after Knight's death. Thissecond volume had a commentary that was hostile to Knight, but it neverthelessincluded (as an appendix) an essay by Knight that he had intended as itsintroduction and commentary, as well as specimens of sculpture which hadbelonged to him. There are also remarks which are attributed to him in theòfficial' commentary, so his name appears with greater frequency in the secondvolume, which is therefore still stamped with his imprint. The two volumestogether make a problematic whole, as the second volume includes specimens ofsculpture and engraving which would not have been approved in the earlierbook, as well as some remarks that distance the writer from identification withKnight's views.1 The matter is further confused by the fact that the introductionsto both volumes were presented anonymously, whereas Knight's second essaywent out under his own personal name, which gives the views presented the airof being personal opinions, in contrast with the lofty authority that seems toattach to the voice without personality that introduces the volumes. There isapparent continuity in the anonymous voice from one volume to the next, butKnight is displaced to a less authoritive position in the second volume, and it isonly then that it is officially announced that his had been the àuthoritive' voicein the first volume.

The project was without doubt inspired by Winckelmann's account ofancient art, and by its shortcomings. The engraved plates are of a far higherquality than those which Winckelmann managed to commission ± the plates ofSpecimens of Antient Sculpture match the high standards set by the Society ofDilettanti's earlier publication of the Antiquities of Athens, by Stuart and Revett,and they have the same large folio format, so they make an apparentcontinuation of the same series. Knight's introductory essay to the secondvolume was an exposition of `The Symbolical Language of Antiquity', whichsought to interpret the symbolic aspects of antique art in general, and whichagain can be seen as marking a step forward from Winckelmann's oftensuccessful attempts to decode the meaning of ancient images. Winckelmannmade progress by taking images of groups of figures found in Rome and

Art History ISSN 0141-6790 Vol. 25 No. 4 September 2002 pp. 550±565

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matching them not to Roman myths (as had previously been done) but to Greekones, which they fitted with greater felicity, helping to establish the importanceof Greek culture in the Roman art world.2 What Knight did in his commentarywas to take the images to be emblems from Greek religion, symbolically coded,and this gave him a feeling that there was a vast wealth of arcane knowledge tobe uncovered from them. His interpretations are not always convincing. Theycan sound over-elaborate, but sometimes, when an image does not make sense ina straightforward way, his method comes into its own. Knight had alreadypublished the essay `The Symbolical Language of Antiquity' (without illustra-tions) at a time when it must have been clear to him that the second volume ofSpecimens of Antient Sculpture would not be coming out during his lifetime,maybe never at all. In fact, Knight's essay was to be reprinted not only inSpecimens of Antient Sculpture, but also later ± the only one of his many booksto appear in a new edition after his death, before the revival of interest in himduring the twentieth century. The essay revisited the theme of his very firstpublication ± A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus ± which had also beenpublished by the Society of Dilettanti, for private circulation, in 1786.

So the two volumes of Specimens of Antient Sculpture were to represent asignificant step forward in scholarship, both in producing images of a highquality, and in producing a commentary which would enable them to beunderstood properly. The commentary to the first volume was concerned toestablish a chronology and to establish the superiority of Greek over Romanwork. It specifically excluded discussion of the symbolic aspects of the sculpture,because this would be treated in the second volume. The tone of the writing islofty and pedantic, but an argument is shaped here that clearly has behind it somepassionate feeling, and it comes as a surprise to find just how vehemently Romanculture is deplored in these pages, and how the grounds for the denunciationconnect with the political events of the day. The story presented in the text goesthat in the well-regulated city states of ancient Greece, perfection had beenachieved, so that it was necessary for art not to deviate at all from Greek practice.Deviation could only lead to vice and extravagance.3 Knight described the comingof the dominion of Rome as à great and disastrous change in the affairs ofmankind, which brought all the learned and civilized nations of the earth underthe hard dominion of one military republick; and, in its consequences, plungedthem into barbarism and utter darkness.'4 The remarks reflect the anxieties ofKnight's own day, being written at a time when the rise of Napoleon was yet to bechecked ± the battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo lay in the future, and there wasno saying whether Britain too might not fall to Napoleon's imperial ambition.Elsewhere Knight showed his characteristic general scorn for the middle ages ± inthe manner typical of Enlightenment thinkers ± seeing it as a dark age ofsuperstition and ignorance. This is only to be expected from someone with hisgeneral cast of mind. What is far from commonplace, even among determinedradicals, is the way in which Knight here projects medieval attitudes (or moreprecisely an Enlightenment caricature of medieval attitudes) back into the cultureof Imperial Rome, so that the onset of medieval vice is not to be found beginningsuddenly with the fall of Rome to the barbarians in the fifth century AD, but muchmuch earlier ± in the second century BC. It was then, Knight observed, that àrt,

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having reached its summit, began gradually to decline.'5 Superstition ± always abad thing in Knight's view ± was rife among the Romans,6 as it would continue tobe during the middle ages. Knight thoroughly approved of the ancient religion ofthe Greeks, which he saw as using the poetic images of gods as the personificationof the forces of nature. It was, therefore, in his view rational. The images werefanciful, but they demonstrated scientific truths ± ìt conveyed abstract ideasunder visible forms.'7 In this line of thought Knight followed the Barond'Hancarville and the earlier attempt by Francis Bacon to decode ancientsymbolism in The Wisedom of the Ancients.8 Knight would, he said, explain thisfully in the introductory essay to the second volume. Here, in the first volume, heexplained that in Roman art `the mystic system, though degraded and corrupted,was not yet extinct, and the meanness of the characters, poverty of the drapery,and feebleness of the action, all indicate an expiring effort of the art.'9

Knight tended to follow the moral teaching of Epicurus, who advised that it isbest to gratify the appetites of the body, avoiding any tendency to excess, andaiming to limit the appetite so that it could very readily be gratified and would notmake one its slave.10 He saw the medieval Christians as losing sight of the benefitsof this teaching, so that the monastic virtues of fasting, celibacy and abstinencewere, from his point of view, simply perversions.11 Again this view was normalamong Enlightenment intellectuals. It is not usual to find the same chargesdirected against the pre-Christian Romans, but in Knight's mind the decline of thearts was caused by the same mechanism: education and prevailing opinion taughtthe Romans to oppose `the gratifications of pride and ambition to those of easeand sensuality; and thus deprived death of its terrors by depriving life of itsenjoyments'.12 The state of moral as well as artistic decline meant that life wasdevalued along with art, and ambition was such that of the twenty emperors whosucceeded Septimus Severus, and `who followed each other in the brief period ofseventy years, only one died a natural death; and he after a reign of only twoyears.'13 The decline of art is portrayed as a symptom which correlates with thedecline of society in a more general way. And the decline is associated not with theadoption of Christianity ± as it was in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the RomanEmpire ± but with imperialism. Indeed, the decline of art is linked deliberatelywith the rise of the very idea of imperialism, which began with the Macedonianking Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC. It was precisely in Macedoniathat Knight located the point where civilization began to decline:

Art, having thus reached its summit, began gradually to decline. Throughthe weakness of some of the Macedonian dynasties, the tyranny of others,and the ambition and extravagance of all, revolts and dissentions wereexcited; and the funds which had been applied to nourish genius anddevelope [sic] talent, applied to less salutary purposes; to spread desolation,or pamper ostentatious vanity, or sordid luxury.14

Plainly, in Knight's view, art could not achieve the highest merit in suchcircumstances. He followed Winckelmann in making a strong connection betweenthe ideal life of the ancient Greeks and the excellence of their art,15 and in hispractical involvement with politics he was guided by an ideal of liberty and the


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desire to see culture as a totality: the ideal way of life would be conducive to theproduction of the best possible art. Hence the recurrent theme of the commentarywhich continually links political history with connoisseurship. It is certain, inKnight's view of the matter, that work of the highest merit must have come fromfree Greece, and could not have come from despotic imperialistic Rome. It istherefore unfortunate for Knight that he did not entertain a higher opinion of theParthenon sculptures when Lord Elgin brought them from Athens.16 Firstly, it isclear that he did not like Elgin, which led him to make ungenerous remarks outloud ± plainly he intended to hurt. Secondly and more importantly, the sculpturesdid not fit his idea of what the finest sculpture would be. The pedimentalsculptures were badly damaged, and had lost the surface, which was what wouldhave given the sculptures their expressivity ± there are many remarks on the pagesof Specimens of Antient Sculpture drawing attention to the intactness of surfaces,which it is true can patinate to take on the apparent texture of skin. However,Knight believed that the pedimental sculptures were Hadrianic replacements, notthe original work from the fifth century BC, and they are not mentioned at all inthis book. He did not originate that idea, but he maintained it. He was wrong, andfrom the time that he was known to be wrong, his reputation as an authority onGreek sculpture was blasted. That is why the second volume did not appearduring his lifetime.

Knight believed that architectural sculpture would never have been the bestsculpture of an age, and therefore excluded it from the highest rank of art. Friezesand metopes would be decorative art, but it would be as much a mistake to lookfor signs of genius in them as it would to do so in the work of an interiordecorator. The only architectural sculpture to be illustrated in the first volume ofSpecimens of Antient Sculpture was included not as a formal plate, but as anillustrative endpiece to the essay (plate 37).

The most antient monument of Grecian sculpture now extant isunquestionably the broken piece of natural relief in the ancient portal tothe gates of Mycenae, which is probably the same that belonged to thecapital of Agamemnon, and may therefore be at least as old as the age ofDaedalus. It represents two lions rampant, sufficiently entire to afford avery tolerable idea of the style of the work. The plate of it given in the tail-piece to this discourse, is engraved from a sketch made upon the spot, andcorrected by admeasurement, by William Gell, esq. And though this doesnot afford any very accurate information as to the details of the work, thethree compositions of the engraved gem given with it are perfectlycompetent to supply such information; they being in exactly the same styleand having been found in the same country by the same intelligent andindustrious traveller.17

This sculpture had special significance, as it came from the age of Homer and hishistorical-mythical heroes. (A measure of its prestige was that it was adopted asthe insignia of the Royal Institute of British Architects.) A more polishedrendering of the same sculpted panel was included in the second volume, this onethe work of a Mr Hawkins (plate 38). The commentary notes that properly this



sculpture should not be included in the volume, because it is not in a Britishcollection.18 The exceptional historical interest here uniquely outweighed thefeeling that architectural sculpture did not merit inclusion. At the other end of thescale, the sculpture from the Parthenon which was certainly of the highest classwas the cult image of Athena by Phidias himself. Unfortunately, this statue hadbeen destroyed. It was made of bronze, covered in ivory and gold (which couldusefully be melted down) and could not have been absorbed into any merelydecorative scheme when the building was turned into a church. However, ThomasHope owned a large marble copy of the statue, made in ancient times. He was onthe Society of Dilettanti's publication committee for the book, and the statue soimpressed that it was included twice, once in each volume. It was the onlyspecimen of ancient sculpture to reappear in this way ± there were only two otherrepetitions, one of them being the improved representation of the panel atMycenae, the other the Earl of Egrement's Apollo where the first artist had madethe sculpture look awkward (see below). Hope's Athena was alone in beingadequately represented in the first volume, and then included in the second for thesheer joy of it (plate 39).

It was thought that this statue was the work of the studio of Phidias, evenperhaps by the great man himself,19 and it enjoyed a glamour and celebrity whichhas vanished from it forever, now that it is believed to be a Roman copy. Of allthe antiquities sold from Hope's collection in 1917, this was the one which fetched

37 Sculptural relief from the Lion Gate at Mycenae, and engraved gems. Endpiece from vol. Iof Specimens of Antient Sculpture. By permission of the British Library.



the highest price ± 6,800 guineas (£7,140). In 1933 it was auctioned again, and wasbought in by Sotheby's at £200 ± a spectacular fall from grace followingreattribution.20 Knight's account of the production of Greek sculpture contrastswith that of Roman. The Roman artists were expected to make portrait images oftyrants, so Ìnstead of giving appropriate form and character to abstractperfections or poetical images, the artist was thus degraded to the mean andirksome labour of copying the features and embellishing the form of somecontemptible despot.'21 How different from the Greek practice: for the Greekartists àll the charms of beauty, grace, majesty, and elegance, which the humanmind can bestow on the human form, were vigorously conceived and mostcorrectly executed.'22 Slavish imitation of superficial appearances was not thepoint ± that would be merely a mechanical skill ± the great artist would workapparently from an exalted and well-stocked mind.

It was not by copying individual nature in their works that they gave tothose works a character so much above it; but by previously studying andcopying it in detail till they had become completely possessed of it, andwere enabled to decompose and recompose it as they pleased by memoryonly, so as to trust imagination in refining embellishing, and exalting it,without incurring the risk of any other deviation from truth. Thus theyexhibited the forms, as the great father of poetry has exhibited the mindsand actions of men, only differing from those of which we have dailyexperience, by being upon a more exalted scale, and employing a morevigorous and perfect organization.23

38 Sculptural relief from the Lion Gate at Mycenae, plate III of vol. II ofSpecimens of Antient Sculpture. By permission of the British Library.



The general view of the Greeks was that they could do no wrong, and that theirsculptural works had never been excelled. However when it came to matching thisview with the evidence to support it, Knight repeatedly ran into trouble. Manysculptural works which Knight took to be from Classical Greece are now thoughtto be Roman copies of Hellenistic work, and when he was faced with genuinelyClassical work, he did not always see in it the exalted value which he theoreticallybelieved should have been there. Lord Elgin had brought the statuary from theParthenon to London in 1806, and it was eventually bought for the nation in 1816,

39 Athena, in the collection of Thomas Hope, plate XXV of vol. I ofSpecimens of Antient Sculpture. By permission of the British Library.



so its eventual whereabouts was uncertain when Specimens of Antient Sculpturewas being written. It is nevertheless surprising to find that its presence on thisisland was not so much as mentioned, though the works were discussed, anddenigrated. He referred the reader not to the collection of sculptures, but to theSociety of Dilettanti's publication, The Antiquities of Athens (compiled by Stuartand Revett). He avoided mentioning the large statues from the pediments, whichhe continued to think were Hadrianic (from the second century AD) and explainedthat the frieze and metope panels did not belong to the highest class of art ± beingarchitectural decoration, executed by `workmen scarcely ranked among artists,and meant to be seen at the height of more than forty feet from the eye'.24

Specimens of Antient Sculpture therefore cannot any longer be taken as anauthoritive account of the works which are presented, but it is a valuabledocument for understanding the taste and the preoccupations of its time. Forexample, the sculpture which Knight singled out for the highest praise of all isnow virtually unknown. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was in Knight's own collection.He knew that most of the antique marble statues around were Roman copies ofGreek originals, and part of the project of Specimens of Antient Sculpture was toidentify genuine Greek work. He found it, most excellently, in a small brassfigure: an Apollo Didymaeus, or androgynous personification of Apollo (plates 40and 41). `For taste and elegance of design,' he said,

grace and ease of action, and delicacy and skill of execution, it is perhapsthe most perfect work of human art now extant. The countenanceexpresses a mind seriously though placidly intent on the action; to whichevery limb and muscle spontaneously co-operate, without any particulareffort or exertion; so that, from whatever point the figure be viewed, itsattitude and posture are as easy and natural, as they are graceful, elegantand beautiful. The unperverted influence of a dignified and exalted mindupon a free and unrestrained body, appears in every limb, joint, andfeature; in which the skill of consummate art has united the truth andsimplicity of individual, with the abstract perfection of ideal nature. It hasevery characteristic of the original work of a great artist, and is certainlynot unworthy of Praxiteles himself.25

Clearly, Knight would have loved to have been able to attribute the work to anamed artist, but he had no evidence to allow the attempt to be plausible.Winckelmann himself had attributed one of Townley's sculptures to Polykleitos,26

but wrongly, as Knight and Townley knew by the time they selected whichspecimens they would include in the volume ± otherwise this sculpture wouldcertainly have been included. That Knight should have singled out this particularApollo as worthy of such extraordinarily high praise, and indeed the fact that hepraised by means of the particular terms of approbation he used, shows that hehad adopted from Winckelmann the idea that the most perfect kind of bodilybeauty was androgynous ± having elements of both masculine and femininequalities, here confined to secondary characteristics. It can be found in otherneoclassically inspired works, such as David's Death of Bara (1794) ± and alsoRichard Westall's Orpheus (1812), painted for Knight.27 Knight left his collection



to the British Museum, where the sculp-ture of Apollo is now, sometimes ondisplay, but often not. It is, of course,completely eclipsed by the ElginMarbles, which also upstaged the collec-tion of marbles assembled by CharlesTownley ± who had been one ofKnight's closest friends, and whosecollection figures prominently in theSpecimens of Antient Sculpture. Hecollaborated on the volume, even thoughhe had died before it was completed.Townley and Knight shared the sameideas about the symbolic significance ofancient art, which they imbibed fromPierre FrancË ois Hugues, who went bythe name of `Baron' d'Hancarville ± bestknown now as the publisher of SirWilliam Hamilton's collection of Greekvases. Townley and Knight had sharedthe considerable cost of publishing hisresearches, and of keeping him ± whenhe lived with Townley in London.Townley and d'Hancarville are showntogether in Zoffany's famous portrait ofTownley surrounded by his collection.This collection was left to the BritishMuseum, then in its infancy, and itformed the core of its display ± thesestatues were its principal exhibits. Theacquisition of the Elgin Marbles sawthem lose their eminence, and they arenow displayed in a basement, not somuch as an example of the finest antiqueart as of an eighteenth-century collec-tion. One of the peculiarities whichKnight and his contemporaries sharedwith Winckelmann was that their know-ledge of antique sculpture, and theirideas about it, derived mainly fromworks of Imperial Rome ± which is tosay, relatively late Roman works. Theyeulogized the Classical age of Greece butthey did not authoritively know how torecognize its art works. Knight was notalone in making mistakes in this area,but his mistake became very public

40 Front view of brass Apollo, in the collectionof R.P. Knight, plate XLIII of vol. I ofSpecimens of Antient Sculpture. By permissionof the British Library.



knowledge and in the public mind hisauthority was discredited.

Specimens of Antient Sculpture is auseful means of understanding the stateof knowledge and taste of its time, and itremains a folio of beautiful prints.Knight's text repeatedly draws attentionto the fact that we are not faced withmechanical renderings of the works ofart under consideration, but are lookingat one artistic production representing asecond. It is unusual to find this sort ofcommentary. In a modern book thephotographic illustrations of statues arenormally presented as if they wereneutral indications of the appearance ofthe works. In the illustrations toWinckelmann's Monumenti antichiinediti the illustrations are so plainly intheir own idiom ± relying heavily onoutlines ± that the question of corres-pondence hardly arises: they show theiconography clearly enough, but do notattempt to render the material qualitiesof the objects under discussion ± they arepresented simply as images, ready to bedecoded, rather than as sculpted stoneswith sensuous surfaces. In Specimens ofAntient Sculpture there is often completesatisfaction with the way the work of artis depicted ± rendering further descrip-tive comment superfluous. So, forexample, in the commentary for PlateXXXIX, identified as a head of Bacchusin the possession of the Earl of UpperOssory (plate 42), we find the obser-vation that `The character of thecountenance is that of mildness, amenity,and hilarity mixed with dignity, which isfaithfully rendered in the print.'28

However, the more interesting commentsare interpolated when Knight saw short-comings in the rendition. For example,the most severe remarks concerned astatue of Apollo belonging to the Earl ofEgremont (plate 43).

41 Rear view of brass Apollo, in thecollection of R.P. Knight, plate XLIV of vol. Iof Specimens of Antient Sculpture. Bypermission of the British Library.



42 Bacchus, in the collection of the Earl of Ossory,plate XXXIX of vol. I of Specimens of AntientSculpture. By permission of the British Library.

43 Apollo, in the collection ofthe Earl of Egremont, plate LXIIof vol. I of Specimens of AntientSculpture. By permission of theBritish Library.

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Our duty to the public obliges us to acknowledge that justice has not beendone in the print either to the truth of the proportions, the elegance of thelimbs, or the grace of the action in this fine figure of Apollo. The head istoo small, the legs too large, and the posture too erect.29

The reservations about this image were such that a different artist was commis-sioned to try it, and this more successful attempt was included in the secondvolume.30 These remarks concern the mechanical accuracy of the artist'stranscription. Other remarks sketch out a theory of good practice for the artistsengaged in this activity of presenting sculpture in prints. In these circumstancesKnight strongly disapproved of `picturesque' effects, which in other circumstanceshe would be very ready to praise. The point of the illustrations was not to makedecorative works of art, but to enlist the artists' technique in the service ofpresenting the sculpture ± the work of art to be depicted. Therefore, when theeffects of light and shade becameinteresting, they were a distraction fromthe beauty of the sculpture. `The artistwho made the drawing' of a laughingfaun, from Charles Townley's collection(plate 44), `though he had in general avery just feeling for antient sculpture,was rather too fond of introducingeffects of light and shade, properlybelonging to painting, into his imitationsof it; and this fault of refinement isretained in the print, which is otherwiseperfectly accurate.'31 This discussion ischaracteristic of Knight, whose theory ofthe picturesque was fully explained in hisAnalytical Inquiry into the Principles ofTaste of 1805. `Picturesque', he said,meant after the manner of painters, andthe thing which particularly charac-terized the manner of painters was theprinciple of `massing' ± using broadsweeps of colour or shade rather thanpicking up every visible detail in therendering of an image.32 Sculptureoperated by different principles, and itwas the duty of the artist who wasillustrating sculpture to convey theimpression of the original sculpture,rather than make a brilliant pictorialimage. In his remarks about another ofCharles Townley's sculptures, depictedby the same artist (I. Brown, plate 45) hesays:

44 Faun, in the collection of CharlesTownley, plate LIX of vol. I of Specimens ofAntient Sculpture. By permission of theBritish Library.



this head of the Didymaean or androgynous Apollo appears to be afragment of a statue of extremely fine sculpture. It is quite entire, with thesurface perfectly preserved; and is very accurately represented in the print;though the artist has introduced too much of the painter's beauties of playof light and shadow, and glitter of effect; which, how fascinating soe'er inthe sister art, sculpture does not admit of; and which therefore ought notto be employed in the imitations of it; since fidelity of representation, andnot beauty of effect, is the excellence required in such secondaryproductions of art.33

The artists are therefore cast as characters in the production of the book, andare not merely invisible artisans, though as illustrators they are kept firmly in theirplace as artists of a second division of artistic production. There was, as is clearfrom the critical remarks, an expectation that the illustrators should be able tocatch something of the grace and expression of the statues, and that this mightrequire something beyond a mere slavish transcription of the form of the works:some sympathy and feeling also seems to have been needed. However, if the artiststarted to let pictorial beauties (rather than sculptural beauties) become evident inthe illustration, then that overstepped the mark and was grounds for criticism.The accurate imitation of superficial appearances was clearly something to bevalued in the secondary production of illustrative work, and Knight opened hisessay at the beginning of Specimens of Antient Sculpture by explaining thatimitation makes for the basis of all society:

every present generation imitating the improvements of the past, withoutprecluding itself from adding others of its own; so that every acquiredfaculty, whether of mind or body, became instantly naturalized; and everyincidental invention of the individual expanded itself into a commonproperty of the whole race: for, though invention be transitory andoccasional, and usually arising from the necessity of the moment, imitationis permanent and uninterrupted; and proceeds spontaneously and regularlywithout the incentive of any external stimulus.34

Invention makes for progress, but imitation is more widespread, consolidatingand naturalizing the new, indeed making the progress possible ± because withoutit we would simply be faced with a continual starting-again. It is necessary forboth principles to operate if civilization is to arise in the first place, and if it is todevelop at all. The aesthetic theory being proposed in Knight's text is that inancient Greece invention occurred as a matter of course, simply and unaffectedly,because the genuine artists tried to capture in bronze or marble the trace of amental state ± an image formed in the mind, and then externalized. By contrast,the portrait busts of the Romans showed a preoccupation with the servile copyingof superficial appearances, work which was mechanical, pedantic and demeaning.It is a view of art which seems to be calculated to resist the idea of mechanicalreproduction ± certainly it is not threatened in the least by the camera's ability tocapture superficial likenesses. We think most readily of the camera as capturing animage by mechanical means, but that was not a possibility in Knight's day. The



reproduction of three-dimensional objects by means of casting was, however,widespread, not only where casts of antique sculpture were concerned but also formore routine purposes. It is worth remembering that Knight's fortune was one ofthe first of the great fortunes of the Industrial Revolution ± made by hisgrandfather's ironworks ± and cast iron would be one of the early means used inmass-production. He was also a great collector of coins, which were perhaps theearliest type of mass-produced object, and which included representationalimages. Knight's version of neoclassicism gave overwhelming priority not to theparticular forms of Greek art, but to the idea of the spontaneous and inspired linkbetween mind and action. We see Knight at the beginning of the nineteenthcentury already investing particular value in something he saw being driven out ofthe modern world ± the all too human activity which could never be replaced bymechanical efficiency or pedantic measurement. It would be possible to cast iniron perfectly proportioned Ionic columns, but such a way of working would haveby-passed what Knight saw as valuable in Greek work. He saw the ideal state as

45 Androgynous Apollo, in the collection of Charles Townley,plate LXIV of vol. I of Specimens of Antient Sculpture. Bypermission of the British Library.



having existed in ancient times, in the independent city states of Classical Greece,and he saw its decline to date from the inception of the idea of empire. Theattempt to sustain a link between the existence of an ideal society and theproduction of perfect works of art was romantic and flawed, but the idea persists± now linking with the Parthenon marbles, rather than the examples which Knightand Townley selected. The most valuable part of Knight's view of ancient Greece,though, is his desire to see the transient spontaneities of the mind snatched fromthe air and transmitted across time, so that the greatest works of art are not thosewhich show the greatest mechanical skill, but those which have drawn on anartist's superb technique in order to pass on to us traces of the great artists' mentallife ± felt not as a dazzling technical performance, but as an inspirational breathwafted across aeons of time.

Andrew BallantyneUniversity of Newcastle

Notes

1 Specimens of Antient Sculpture, 2 vols, publishedby the Society of Dilettanti (hereafter Specimens).Neither gives an author on the title page, but vol.1 is by Richard Payne Knight (1809). Vol. 2(1835) is clearly a continuation of the initialproject, despite the intervening years. Many ofthe plates are by the same artists as in the firstvolume, and production of them could have beensteady. Presumably the reason for completing thepublication in 1835 was that there was a sizeablestock of high-quality illustrative material at theSociety's disposal, and indeed commissioned atthe Society's expense. The new introductoryessay, by J.B.S. Morritt, was followed by theessay by Knight on `The Symbolical Language ofAntiquity', as promised in the first volume. Ithad in the meantime been published as anindependent volume in 1818 ± at which point itmust have been evident to Knight that the secondvolume would not see the light of day during hislifetime, the purchase of the Elgin Marbles in1816 having brought to an end his reputation asan authority on these matters. See MichaelClarke and Nicholas Penny, The ArrogantConnoisseur: Richard Payne Knight 1751±1824,Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982,p. 149.

2 Johann Joachim Winckelmann's principalpublications were Gedanken uÈ ber dieNachahmung der greichischen Werke, translatedby Henry Fuseli as Reflections on the Paintingand Sculpture of the Greeks, London, 1765; andGeschichte der Kunst des Alterthums, 1st ednDresden, 1764; 2nd edn Vienna, 1776, translatedby G.H. Lodge as The History of Ancient Artamong the Greeks, London, 1850. HisMonumenti antichi inediti, Rome, 1767,

presented specimens of ancient sculpture. Knightmade some critical and no appreciative remarksabout Winckelmann, but his whole view ofancient Greece was shaped by his reading ofWinckelmann, whose works he would haveknown from Fuseli's translation and from theFrench editions, to which his footnotessometimes refer.

3 Specimens, vol. I, p. lii (sect. 90).4 Specimens, vol. I, p. liii.5 Specimens, vol. I, p. li.6 Specimens, vol. I, p. lix.7 Specimens, vol. I, p. i.8 `Baron d'Hancarville' was the fraudulentlyadopted name of Pierre FrancË ois Hugues, authorof Recherches sur l'origine et les progreÁ s des artsde la GreÁ ce, 3 vols, London, 1785. See AndrewBallantyne, Architecture, Landscape and Liberty:Richard Payne Knight and the Picturesque,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997,especially pp. 89±94 and footnotes. FrancisBacon, De Sapienta Veterum (1609), translatedby Arthur Gorges as The Wisedome of theAncients (1619).

9 Specimens, vol. I, p. lxxix.10 Ballantyne, op. cit. (note 8), pp. 22±7.11 ibid., and Richard Payne Knight, The Landscape

(1795 edn), bk. I, lines 395±8.12 Specimens, vol. I, p. lxi.13 Specimens, vol. I, p. lxxix.14 Specimens, vol. I, p. li.15 Winckelmann, History of Ancient Art, vol. I,

p. 286. Ballantyne, op. cit. (note 8), pp. 40±5.16 Ballantyne, op. cit. (note 8), pp. 45±58.17 Specimens, vol. I, pp. vii±viii.18 Specimens, vol. II, p. xix.19 Specimens, vol. I, commentary for plate XXV.



20 Geoffrey Waywell, The Lever and HopeSculptures, Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1986,p. 67.

21 Specimens, vol. I, p. li.22 Specimens, vol. I, p. xxxviii.23 Specimens, vol. I, p. xxxix.24 Specimens, vol. I, p. xxxix.25 Specimens, vol. I, commentary for plates XLIII

and XLIV.26 B.F. Cook, The Townley Marbles, London:

British Museum Press, 1985, p. 11.27 Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Joseph Bara,

1794, is reproduced in Abigail Solomon-Godeau,

Male Trouble: A Crisis in Representation,London: Thames and Hudson, 1997, p. 135.Richard Westall, Orpheus, 1812, is reproduced inBallantyne, op. cit. (note 8), p. 178.

28 Specimens, vol. I, commentary for plate XXXIX.29 Specimens, vol. I, commentary for plate LXII.30 Specimens, vol. II, plate XLV.31 Specimens, vol. I, commentary for plate LIX.32 Richard Payne Knight, An Analytical Inquiry into

the Principles of Taste, 1st edn, London, 1805;4th and final edn 1808, p. 150.

33 Specimens, vol. I, commentary for plate LXIV.34 Specimens, vol. I, p. ii.



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Specimens of Antient Sculpture: Imperialism and the decline of art